The Children of Bolivia Overview Bolivia has made significant progress in recent years, but major challenges remain. Indicative of the progress, Bolivia is on-track to achieving many of its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) targets. For example, so far, the ones pertaining to extreme poverty, malnutrition, literacy, gender equality and institutional delivery coverage have already been reached.
However, Bolivia still has some of the worst social indicators in the region. Poverty rates remain high with 43 per cent of the country’s 10 million people living under the national poverty line of whom 61 per cent live in rural areas. Wide economic and social disparities persist especially between rural and urban areas, indigenous people and non-indigenous, poorer and richer groups and between females and males.
An indigenous boy in Tarabuco, Municipality, Chuquisaca. Incidence of extreme poverty (2012): 36.8 per cent among indigenous and 12.1 per cent among non-indigenous population groups
UNICEF/Bolivia/Pirozzi
Moreover, economic growth has been steady, averaging 4.8 per cent between 2008 and 2012, and now Bolivia is classified as a lower middle income country. The number of people in the middle-income group has grown from 2.1 to 5.3 million between 1999 and 2012, according to UNDP estimates. In addition, social expenditures in favour of children increased from 7.8 per cent to 8 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between 2008 and 2010; that is from US$ 1.2 to 1.5 billion. The education sector receives the most at 64.2 per cent, whereas the health sector received 18.8 per cent and social protection 5.2 per cent.